


ascension

by starlightment



Series: Gift Fics [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Prince Lance (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cute, First Meetings, Galran Prince Keith (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Romance, but it's keith so he's trying to yeet leadership into another dimension, keith is going to become king, prince AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightment/pseuds/starlightment
Summary: In the aftermath of a devastating war, Prince Keith of Daibazaal wonders if he’s truly ready to claim the throne. But an unexpected encounter with a certain Altean prince might just help him see his destiny a bit more clearly.





	ascension

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wlwseahawk](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=wlwseahawk).



> A prince au written for @wlwseahawk. Hope you enjoy! <3

**. . .**

 

The distant murmurs of war still cling to the air like a dark, sickening smog. Whispers of tragedy, the muted echoes of loss still thrum through the kingdom of Daibazaal, settling heavy and bone-deep, even as they rise from the ashes a proudly victorious nation.

“We have lost our king,” announces Shiro, the royal family advisor, on that lightless morning when he’d stood diligently at the podium, and gazed out into a sea of mottled, mourning faces, “but we have not lost our will to carry on.”

That had been three weeks ago.

Three weeks since Daibazaal lost their beloved king. 

Three weeks since Keith lost his father.

“On the eve of our prince’s eighteenth birthday,” Shiro had continued, “noblemen and esteemed guests alike will gather to celebrate his coronation — and all shall bear witness to the birth of a new leader as he claims his rightful place as king of Daibazaal.”

Keith remembers how the crowd had roared; how they had cheered, and screamed, and praised his name like he was some kind of saint. Even now, he can’t seem to stop the ringing in his ears, or the rolling of his stomach.

It settles in him, heavy and bone-deep.

And when the night of reckoning is upon them, the ink-black sky is set ablaze from the palace’s ethereal glow. Inside, it’s alive and buzzing with guests from near and far, donned in their finest garments, all streaked with gold and honeyed hues as they mingle through those gilded halls. Whispers of hope, echoes of excitement — everyone is eager to welcome Daibazaal’s crown prince.

— Who just so happens to be utterly and unfavorably  _absent_.

The convenient thing about being cooped up in the palace for his entire life is that Keith now boasts some intimate knowledge about all the most advantageous points of escape. He knows which doors lead to the outside, and which windows are closest to the ground, and which gates are least likely to be heavily guarded. And so he disguises himself in his father’s old cloak, scales the wall of ivy that leads down into the west garden, and leaves the tinkling din of party prattle far, far behind him as he makes a stealthy break for the stables.

But as he approaches the wooden barn, he can already hear a distressing clamor of brays from his horse, Kosmo. And so Keith picks up his pace, and barges through the doors to find the large Thoroughbred rearing back onto its hind-legs, kicking its massive hooves into the air, struggling against nothing.

“Hey, hey,” Keith whispers sharply, raising his arms, and stepping into Kosmo’s line of vision. The horse simmers down at the sight of him, still neighing and stomping its restless feet into the dirt. “Easy, boy, it’s me — it’s just me.”

Keith strokes Kosmo’s snout until the horse falls silent, and he glances around the empty stable for anything that could’ve been responsible for the uproar. A barn owl. A pesky mouse, perhaps. And Keith is just about to chalk it up to night terrors when Kosmo snorts, and pushes its nose stubbornly into Keith’s shoulder. He turns slowly, stares deeply into the shadows, and then —

Something rustles in the back corner of the stable.

It happens, and then it’s gone, but Keith has the spine-tingling sense that something — some _one_ , rather — is still lurking. He draws his trusty dagger from its leather sheath, feeling the cool ridges of the hilt press into his palm as he steps closer, closer,  _closer_.

Keith lunges, hears a strangled yelp, and — next thing he knows — he has the trespasser pinned beneath him in a mound of hay, blade hovering above the throat, just enough to harbor the chilling reminder of mortality.

“Stop,  _stop_!” the trespasser pleads. He’s young, Keith takes quick notice, with wide brown eyes, and a bronzed, sweat-sheened complexion. “I — I wasn’t going to do anything, I swear —”

“Like  _hell_  you weren’t,” Keith growls close to his face. “What other business would you have sneaking through the royal stables unattended?”

The trespasser breathes something like a chuckle, but it comes out sounding pitchy and panicked more than anything else. “The stables? Oh, I, uh — must’ve taken a wrong turn over by the…  _gardens_ …”

“You were going to steal a horse.”

“But I was going to return it!”

“ _Thief_ ,” the prince snarls, lowering his blade until it barely grazes flushed skin.

The trespasser shrieks again. “No, I —”

“Speak wisely. They may be your last words.”

“I — Lance!” comes a rushed burst of air past trembling lips. “I’m Lance —  _Prince_  Lance of Altea!”

Keith goes stiff. His fingers burn where they’re wrapped tightly around the hilt of his dagger, white-hot rage cooling inside of him as he sees it — those telltale marks framing the boy’s eyes, pulsing bright flashes of turquoise to match, he assumes, the ragged beat of his startled heart.

“ _You’re_  the Altean prince?” says Keith, recoiling his blade.

“You don’t recognize me?” the boy — the  _prince_ , apparently — has the audacity to grin now that he’s no longer being held at knife-point. “What, have rumors of my devastating good looks not yet reached Galra territory?”

Keith’s brow pinches up as he staggers back to his feet, straightening out his cloak with a low, clipped, “My apologies…  _Your Highness_.”

“Well,” Lance, too, pulls himself up, plucking strands of hay from his tousled hair and well- tailored Altean garments — which Keith had also failed to notice before. “You didn’t end up slitting my throat, so I suppose we can forget about it.”

Keith levels him with a hard stare. “You’re — cheekier than I anticipated.”

“And you’re stronger than I anticipated,” Lance chirps. “You know. For a commoner.”

Ah. Right. The hood of Keith’s cloak is still shrouding his face in mystery — quite useful for a runaway prince. Not that he expects a foreigner to know precisely what he looks like, anyway.

“I’m not —” Keith begins to say, as if on instinct. But he clamps down on his tongue, and finishes softly, “—I’m not that strong.”

“My back begs to differ,” mutters Lance, rolling his left shoulder in small, lazy circles to make sure it still functions properly.

With the commotion now settled, and both boys fallen silent, Keith can hear the the sounds of faraway laughter and lilting orchestral music coming from the palace grounds. It fills his gut with dread, and reminds him why he’s here, awkwardly conversing with an Altean prince, in the first place.

“Shouldn’t you be inside, Your Highness?” Keith finally asks.

And the question catches Lance off-guard, for whatever reason. The boy’s shoulders deflate, his long, slender frame folding in on itself, and he can’t seem to look anywhere but at the ground. “Ah. Well,” he stammers, twisting his fingers together in front of his chest. “It was getting a bit dull in there for my taste, if you must know.”

“So instead you snuck off to the stables,” says Keith, a withering look hidden beneath his hood. “To steal the prince’s horse.”

“He’s a prince!” Lance huffs defensively. “He must have at least  _ten_  horses. Surely he can spare me  _one_.”

Both Keith’s eyebrow and the corner of his mouth inches upward.

“A-And what of you?” Lance demands in a flurry, as if he can sense the way amusement clings to Keith’s masked features, making him desperate to change the subject. “I didn’t think they allowed commoners to attend the coronation ball tonight.”

“I… serve the royal family,” Keith explains quickly. Simple enough. “I am the prince’s stablehand.”

“I see,” says Lance, hands falling to his slim hips. “But certainly even a stablehand must have a name.”

_Damn._

Keith thinks. His mind scrambles a bit. 

“Yorak,” he blurts out at once. Good.  _Lovely_.

Lance’s lips begin to wiggle. Just a bit. His eyes are twinkling with something that looks like stardust, and then soon enough his entire body is twitching and trembling, doubling over with wholehearted laughter. It rattles the wooden walls, making Kosmo stamp its hooves, and Keith break into a furrowed frown.

“What is so funny?” he bites.

“F-Forgive me, I —” Lance heaves breathlessly, smacking a palm over his mouth as he giggles some more. “— you Galra have the strangest names.”

The quiet tittering goes on for a while longer, until Keith is impatient enough to prompt, “Finished, are you?”

Laughter dissolves off his lips, leaving in its place a soft, hazy smile. It warms something in the depths of Keith’s chest, setting nerves aflame, and blazing, blazing,  _blazing_  until he feels it in his toes.

“Almost,” says Lance, and then he’s taking a step forward. Another. And another.

“Your Highness —” Keith tries, suddenly dazed, and struck dumb by the realization that they’re standing very, very close now.

Lance just keeps smiling. “If you have a name, then you must have a face as well.”

Keith is downright helpless to the way Lance grips the thick, velvet material of his hood, and gently pushes it away from his head. Everything is revealed all at once — the splattered dusting of pink across his pale cheeks. The curved, discolored battle scar that extends all the way down to the sharp line of his jaw. His parted lips, his pitch-black hair, and a dark pair of cobalt eyes that can’t seem to stop staring at Lance.

And Lance is staring back, so awestruck and deadly silent that — for a brief, terrifying moment — Keith believes he’s been recognized.

But then Lance is whispering, “Forgive me,” and pulling his hands away when he remembers that he’s still clinging to the fabric of Keith’s cloak. “I — I do not mean to  _stare_ …”

“You —” Keith clears his throat, finding his voice. “— You require a horse?” 

“Just for the evening,” Lance nods dumbly.

Keith lopes back around to Kosmo, who grunts happily when Keith pats the horse’s neck. “This horse will not obey your commands. Only mine.”

He turns in time to see the arch of Lance’s brow.

“And the prince’s,” he adds swiftly. “We’ll ride together.”

As Keith tugs on the reins, and mounts his steed with a practiced grace, Lance ambles a bit closer, eyeing the pair with something resembling suspicion. “Where will we go?” he asks.

Keith extends a calloused hand, palm out and waiting. “Wherever you’d like, Your Highness.”

 

* * *

  

They ride until they reach the riverbank, and Keith can count the number of times on one hand that he’s seen this remarkable sight in person — the moon, nestled in a sea of stars, shining down onto the water’s surface so that it shimmers and dances on the ripples, making the entire earth go strangely silver.

Lance looks delighted as he saunters to the river’s edge, picking flat stones out of the mud and tossing them across the water until they bounce. He teaches Keith the proper technique, and the first time Keith gets one to skip more than twice has Lance whooping and cheering with such fervor that Keith actually snorts with laughter.

Now they sit in a patch of grass overlooking the water, with Kosmo grazing quietly nearby. And Keith is counting the stars, one by one, when he asks, “Won’t your family be wondering where you’ve gone?”

“My family is rather —  _domineering_  when it comes to social gatherings,” Lance says slowly, choosing his words with careful precision. “I have five brothers and sisters, and I doubt that any of them will have even noticed that I left.”

Keith blinks his eyes away from the sky, back to Lance. “There’s five of you?”

“And I’m the youngest,” he grinds out a bit dismally as he pulls his knees into his chest. “Last in line for the crown. I’ll sooner die of old age than sit upon the throne.”

“Why would you want to?”

And Lance’s response is instantaneous, and so, so genuine. “I can think of no greater honor than to help my people.”

“It’s not an honor,” Keith mumbles, just as instantaneous. “It’s your birthright.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t understand,” says Lance, lips tweaking into a subtle, lopsided grin. “After all, what would  _you_  know about honor if you’re so quick to abandon your own coronation ceremony?”

Keith’s heart stutters to a halt.

“Right,  _Your Highness_?”

His breath is thick and dense inside his throat. “How —”

“A face like yours?” Lance chuckles. “I knew the moment I saw you that you couldn’t possibly be just a humble stableboy.”

Keith doesn’t know how to take that, so he stares out at the river until the moonlight makes him squint.

“Prince Keith of Daibazaal,” Lance is saying, slow and smooth. “Or should I say king now?”

He stares, and stares.

“Though I must admit that I shall miss good ‘ol Yorak now that —”

“ _Stop_ ,” says Keith, much too fiercely. Beside him, he sees Lance flinch in his peripheral. “Please… stop.”

“Stop what?” Lance breathes.

“Stop reminding me of what I already know,” he closes his eyes, holding fast to the darkness. “I want it to just — stop.”

He hears Lance shift, perhaps unfurling his long legs. And then he speaks low, “You cannot just stop your people from counting on you.”

“I never asked them to.”

“Of course not — it’s your  _duty_.”

“I don’t  _want_  it!”

When Keith snaps his eyes open again, it’s to find that the water’s surface hasn’t shattered like glass. The air hasn’t calcified in his lungs. And Lance hasn’t moved a single muscle. It’s all very alarming, and still.

“I don’t want — I didn’t want this,” Keith keeps saying, like he can’t stop, like his lips won’t take pity on him and seal themselves shut. “I didn’t want my father to die. I wasn’t… ready for that.”

Keith wishes that Lance would move. Or blink. Or  _something_.

“As princes we are expected to spend our lives in school — learning about diplomacy, and etiquette, and how to hone the finest weapons. They’re preparing us for the inevitable day when we must wear the crown,” he goes on, voice rumbling in his chest, gaze lifeless and dull. “But they fail to prepare us for the moment it actually happens. The moment they tell you that your father isn’t coming home from war. The moment you realize that the only family you’ve ever had is gone forever.”

“Keith,” whispers Lance, soft and broken.

“They don’t prepare you for that,” his head shakes. “ _Nothing_  can prepare you for that.”

A hand — Lance’s hand — reaches for Keith’s arm, fingers curling around the crook of his elbow. “I’m sorry about your father,” says Lance.

Keith swallows, his throat aching, and mutters hoarsely, “He was a good man.”

“I know. He came to support my kingdom when we were ambushed by Naxzela. I will always be grateful for that.”

Strong, resourceful, kind-hearted — seldom a negative word was ever uttered about the late king’s character. He fought bravely in battle, and spoke confidently to his people, and always offered aid to his allied kingdoms. He was admired across nations, across borders, across land and sea. And it makes Keith think that —

“I will never be the king that he was,” he says, so low that the quiet hum of nighttime nearly swallows it up.

“I cannot imagine he would expect you to be,” Lance replies. “Nor do I imagine that he would charge into battle and willingly risk his life if he did not think you were ready to succeed him. You have been given the power to  _change_  — to affect your kingdom and do good in its name. You are not serving your father’s memory by running away from your responsibilities, Your Highness.”

His voice has gone coarse, and pinched tight with emotion, nearly bursting at the seams with the force of it all. And when Keith turns to look, he finds Lance’s hand still wrapped around his arm, his warm ochre eyes brimming with something potent and resolute — something that startles and amazes Keith all at once.

“You must understand,” Lance proceeds. “I am desperate to make my voice heard, but have no means of doing so. And  _you_ … you have everything I’ve ever wanted at your very fingertips, and yet are so quick to dismiss it.”

Keith can’t help but think that Lance is rather captivating — right here, right now, beneath the moonlight — when he talks like a prince.

“I just want to help my people,” Lance says again.

And Keith places his hand over Lance’s, smiles gently, and tells him, “At the very least, you’ve helped me.”

 

* * *

  

The palace is still bright and gleaming in the distance when they make it back to the stable.

“Well, now I know what it feels like to be whisked away by a  _strapping_  young prince,” Lance chortles, accepting Keith’s offered hand as he attempts to dismount the horse.

Keith smirks up at him. “Do you always speak so boldly?” 

“Only when it’s appropriate, of course.”

“Oh, yes,  _of course_.”

Another breathless chuckle, until Lance’s foot gets caught in the stirrup, and he has just enough time to squawk before he’s tumbling gracelessly off of Kosmo’s back. His legs are jelly the moment they hit the ground, but Keith’s arms are suddenly looped around Lance’s waist to steady him, and to keep him from falling flat on his face.

Kosmo gives a gleeful neigh, almost as if it were laughter. And perhaps it might’ve set Keith’s cheeks aflame if not for his overwhelming attention on the fact that Lance is leaning into his chest, blinking bewilderingly at him. The marks around his eyes are all aglow, blinding.

“I —” Lance squeaks, straightening up and stepping away. “— suppose we ought to return now.” 

Keith struggles to force out a quick, “Right.”

Lance only takes about three strides before Keith reaches out. And he doesn’t even realize he’s done it until he looks down at where his fingers are wrapped around a slender wrist. Lance pauses, turns around,  _stares_.

“I wish to see you again,” Keith garbles out so suddenly that he thinks he might’ve imagined saying it. “Sometime. Soon.”

The curl of Lance’s lips grows ever more pronounced, more obvious where they lift up toward the dimples of his cheeks. “It would seem we’re both speaking boldly tonight, Your Highness.”

“Earlier, at the river, you — you called me by my name.”

Lance nods, perhaps a bit embarrassed. “I did.”

“You may continue to do so,” says Keith. “If you’d like.”

The tip of Lance’s tongue darts out, just barely enough to wet his bone-dry lips. Then he whispers, “Keith.” And again, like a soft prayer: “ _Keith_.”

“May I see you again?” Keith hurries to ask, fervent and utterly unapologetic.

And the marks around Lance’s eyes are still burning a magnificent blue when he says, “I look forward to it.”


End file.
